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Watch out, chaps, it's another storage sync 'n' share produ-ARRRGH

HDS chucks new contender onto teetering heap

Object-storage flogger HDS has upgraded its object storage platform to provide firewall-guarded file sync 'n' share access to BYOD users.

The Hitachi Content Platform Anywhere product is the sync 'n' share version of the original Hitachi Content Platform (HCP).

With the Anywhere product, data is kept on HCP, where it is secure, protected and compliant rather than being released into the lawless BYOD wild west.

Users save a file to their HCP Anywhere folder and it is automatically sync'ed to all registered devices and becomes available via web browsers. Users can then access such work files anywhere and not just in their company's offices.

HCP stores data as objects which are deduplicated, compressed and "backup-free". The company says users can send links to files and mails instead of transmitting actual data which reduces network bandwidth needs.

Hitachi boasts that its "seamless cloud storage platform... features the most advanced metadata management in the market and sets a foundation for Big Data and analytics."

More specifically it offers:

  • Amazon S3 cloud application support alongside the existing secure storage of data on businesses own premises.
  • Tagging of files with custom metadata from multiple users and applications "to automate more intelligently, simplify management, aid in search, and support analytics."
  • Customers can run HCP in a VMware virtualised server.
  • HCP-managed data can be tiered to external storage.

HCP Anywhere will fight it out for secured BYOD enterprise end-user access. The industry is already fielding multiple pitches from storage firms for secured versions of consumer-style BYOD file sync 'n share. It will face off against startups such as Box, Dropbox, SME and SpiderOak, and mainstream suppliers such as Barracuda, with its Copy product, EMC, with Syncplicity, and NetApp with Connect.

To an extent the mainstream vendors' sale is easy: add BYOD file sync 'n' share to your existing CIO-controlled storage estate and avoid the CxO-level staff getting the heebie-jeebies from staff using consumer-grade file-sharing and taking confidential files outside the firewall... or even, gasp, storing them on a third-party cloud.

IT wants control and things like HCP Anywhere promise a way of providing that while giving the BYOD hordes safe access to corporate data and legitimising the use of a BYOD end-user strategy for the IT operator's staff.

The startups will have a progressively harder and harder sell in the mainstream vendors' customer bases as their promise of magic new data access facilities that end users want and can't get from anywhere else is rebuffed and they have to sell on a features-and-benefits and costs basis.

HDS says its HCP Anywhere product supports IOS - go to Apple's iTunes store for the client software - as well as Windows devices. Android and Linux client support is coming. There's a data sheet here (PDF) for you to check out.

HCP Anywhere will include integration with Hitachi Data Ingestor later this year. The HCP Anywhere and Hitachi Content Platform products are available today worldwide directly through HDS and Hitachi TrueNorth partners. ®

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